Been a hectic few days.

Had my exam yesterday. Not a very fantastic performance on my part (exams never sat well with me), but I do hope I get through it.

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It’s December already. Just reading back on last year’s post. Heh, what a different time it was then. Watching anime, playing Maple Story and selling fish. The weather was horrendous back then as I recall. Working at the fish store gave me relief from the heat because it was air conditioned. These days, my workplace is air conditioned too, heh, but at least I have a fan at home (a decent sized one) that keeps things cool at night (some of the hottest times are dead in the night the air is so still it’s almost stifling). I’m still gaming (playing a lot of Warcraft 3 due to it’s multiplayer and short duration aspects) and only sporadically watching anime these days. I still haven’t finished my book “A Short History of Nearly Everything” and currently I don’t think I have any plans to look at it soon.

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So it’s nearly the end of the year. As with exams, when you can’t do anything else, you always plan to do things after you finish it. I’ve been wanting to fix up interface issues with my website and make it a little more accessible prior to this. Perhaps this month is a good time to do it. WordPress 2.0 should be done with the next 2 months (I follow releases of things I’m interested in very intently) and might just build a new design of the alpha release of the software.

Another thing that looks promising for the beginning of next year is the release of Intel’s Yonah core. That is essentially a dual core mobile processor which will take the new Pentium M spot from the current Dothan core. Benchmarks have shown that it performs quite admirably against a similarly clocked dual core AMD processer (A64 3800+ X2) and with that kind of processing power in a laptop, I’m sure interested. What’s more interesting is that Apple plans to use these new chips in their laptops, and I’d really like one to be able to run Mac OS X and Windows as a dual boot option (I’ve said this before, I’m repeating it only because I’m so excited about it, heh).

Might also want to watch one of those anime series that have been backlogging on my hard drive. Now that I have no exams, I can spend pretty much 2 hours a day just watching it and cramming the rest of it in during the weekends.

Also recently acquired a coffee machine. Heh, one of those accidental buys off EBay (thanks Jerome, and no sarcasm intended, heh). It was cheap at AUD$430 including delivery (RRP is around $700 I think) and it’s a well rounded machine that comes with a decent grinder as well. Was spending last night with Ken and Vyanne (with our limited pool of knowledge) trying to get the machine to make a decent espresso, but in the end, managed one or two semi acceptable shots. Might write a review on it before the month’s over, once I spend a little more time on it. There’s also the review of the ‘dying’ slipper that I’ve been wanting to write about where my friend made a comment on my character and how very true it is.

For photography, recently found a website that does book printing and binding. Basically you download their program, organise your pictures into a book format and you get one of those coffee table photography books. It’s very enticing to me and even if it’s a little pricey (an A4 size book starts off at AUD$80 and that does not include billing for each subsequent photo page you add), it’s worth a look at once I get a sizeable enough photo collection and get to choose the very best of what I like to be printed onto a more permanent format. Still learning little rules of thumb when taking pictures, but not practising it as much. I’ve been finding that the brain works in different modes more efficiently, as I recently discovered while studying for my exam. While doing calculation questions, the brain was more adept mathematically and I couldn’t absorb much of the theory behind it. Vice versa, while understanding the underlying concepts of how financial securities worked, I forgot how to apply formulas to me questions. I’m trying to trick this crummy, old brain of mine to be able to switch hemispheres (or however it works) at will or better yet, to use them simultaneously. Geniuses are generally built that way, being able to apply one train of thought or another across the various tasks/problems presented and they have a more creative way of doing things. Heh, hinting at a genius in the creation *smirk*.

There are probably a bunch of other stuff I’d like to get done in December but aren’t as prominent in my mind. Just hoping the month progresses well with not too many hiccups.